*7 B. The National Origins Act Of 1924 Failed To Fully Achieve The Nativists' Anti-Mexican Goals
Faced with the prospect of non-white immigrants settling in the United States, the Nativists resorted to incremental legislative efforts to influence the composition of the immigrant pool according to their racist view of what was desirable. The Nativists secured an early, if partial, legislative victory with Congress's enactment of the National Origins Act of 1924 (“1924 Act”). Pub. L. No. 68-139, 43 Stat. 153. That law banned all Asian immigrants and required other immigrants who were potentially eligible for entry to submit to inspection at a U.S. immigration station. During inspection, aspiring immigrants would take a literacy test and a health exam, and pay $18 in head taxes and visa fees before being granted entryall requirements that the Nativists believed only certain Europeans could pass. City of Inmates 132-133. The 1924 Act also established a system of national quotas limiting the total number of immigrants allowed entry from eastern-hemisphere countries each year; of the total annual quota allotment, 96% was reserved for European immigrants. Id. at 133.
While these restrictions on immigration from outside Europe were remarkably stringent, the Nativists had actually been pushing for even greater restrictions on non-European immigration. However, they were stymied by business opposition from representatives from the Western states, which increasingly relied on the Mexican immigrant workforce. Due to “the decline of white male itinerancy, the exclusion of Chinese workers, and the nadir of California's indigenous population,” Mexican immigrants had emerged as a significant proportion of the low-wage workforce in the region. City of Inmates 132. As the President of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce put *8 it, “[w]e are totally dependent ... upon Mexico for agricultural and industrial common or casual labor. It is our only source of supply.” Id. at 131 (quoting Devra Weber, Dark Sweat, White Gold: California Farm Workers, Cotton, and the New Deal 35 (1994)). Speaking on behalf of himself and various livestock raisers' associations, rancher Fred Bixby testified before the Senate Committee on Immigration about industrial reliance on Mexican labor. He noted that in California “we have no Chinamen, we have not the Japs. The Hindu is worthless; the Filipino is nothing, and the white man will not do the work.” Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol 30 (2010) (Migra!) (quoting Restriction of Western Hemisphere Immigration: Hearings on S. 1296, S. 1437, and S. 3019 Before the Senate Comm. on Immigration, 70th Cong., 1st Sess. 24, 26 (1928) (statement of Fred Bixby)).
At the time, immigration authorities counted approximately 100,000 Mexicans crossing the border each year. The Nativists' proposed quota would have limited entries to a few hundred. City of Inmates 134. Thus, agribusiness opposed any quota system simply because they relied on Mexican laborers.
Because the bloc of pro-business representatives opposed the quota, the Nativists were forced to choose between a Mexican exemption to the quota system and no immigration quotas at all. They chose the former. The law ultimately exempted from the quota all immigrants from the Western hemisphere, whereas all other nations had a combined annual limit of 165,000 immigrants. City of Inmates 133; John M. Murrin et al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 2: *9 Since 1863, at 659 (7th ed. 2015) (Liberty, Equality, Power). $%^2
The Nativists remained unsatisfied over the following years. Congressman John C. Box, who would later cosponsor a 1926 bill that would have limited Mexican immigration, opined that “[t]he continuance of a desirable character of citizenship * * * will be violated by increasing the Mexican population of the country.” Migra! 28 (quoting Seasonal Agricultural Laborers from Mexico: Hearings Before the House Comm. on Immigration and Naturalization, 69th Cong., 1st Sess. 124 (1926) (statement of John C. Box)). During the congressional hearings for the 1924 Act, another Congressman questioned the wisdom of exempting the Western hemisphere from the nation-by-nation quota system by asking “[w]hat is the use of closing the front door to keep out undesirables from Europe when you permit Mexicans to come in here by the back door by the thousands and thousands?” Id. (quoting David Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity 53-54 (1995)).
With the Western hemisphere not subject to the quota system, Mexicans continued to immigrate in greater numbers. By the end of the 1920s, Mexico became one of the leading sources of immigration to the United States. Migra! 28. But the Nativist backlash continued to build, leading to what would become the Undesirable Aliens Act of 1929.
